Study Questions Nuclear Plant Safety

An environmental group is calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to monitor nuclear power plants more closely before there’s a severe accident. Lester Graham reports the group issued a report on nuke plants that have had problems:

Transcript

An environmental group is calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to monitor nuclear power plants more closely before there’s a severe accident. Lester Graham reports the group issued a report on nuke plants that have had problems:


The report from the Union of Concerned Scientists looked at problems that caused nuclear reactors to shut down for a year or more. It’s happened 51 times. The report found 36 of those year-plus outages were caused by “excessive” tolerance by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.


The nuclear industry notes there has not been a serious accident since Three Mile Island in 1979. The industry says if it can replace its aging plants, things will be even safer.


David Lochbaum is the author of the report. He says hold on, not until you fix the problem.


“Nuclear power plants are aging. But the conditions that led up to these year-plus outages need to be addressed to provide a proper foundation for any new nuclear power plants that are built. Otherwise we’ll just be replicating yesterday’s mistakes.”


The report includes six recommendations to identify and fix problems at nuclear power plants faster.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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